Deadeyes

[Gwyl Blaser]

Over the years, and many ships later, I still have trouble making small scale like dead eyes.  How do you make yours?  What type of material do you use?  Any help would be appreciated.

[DSiemens]

On the really small ships all it takes is a drop of glue or paint in the right place.  Those blobs of paint that ruins rigging on some builds make great dead eyes when placed correctly.  

[Gwyl Blaser]

I have seen some small ships that have used the small paint blobs as deadeyes and blocks.  I'm not sure if there was a small knot tied prior to the paint blob or just the paint alone.

 

Gwyl

[Chasseur]

I have seen miniature seeds, miniature beads, and John Fox III as well as David Fellingham have cut circles out of paper and laminated them. For me and the scale I am currently modelling in I think a painted blob of glue or a knot will look the best IMHO.

Jeff

[Gwyl Blaser]

I have heard about seeds, but never tried them.  I have seen John's article about the cut paper circles but have yet to give that a try. For some reason every time I think about trying to make really small deadeyes I kind of freeze up so to speak.  The paint blob or glue blob is looking like a pretty good alternative until I can test and master these other methods.

 

Gwyl

[Chasseur]

John also has a looped thread technique where by you loop and tie off some thread to represent a block. Then you can run your running rigging through it. Once completed and your ship is in the bottle (everything glued in place and cut) you can come back in and paint the appropriate colour for your tackle with a specially designed wire with loop to hold the paint in the tip. I like this method as it's still small enough to give the illusion of a block and it should be within scale and believable.

Jeff

[Alex Bellinger]

I have used small eyebolts made of copper or steel wire for the lower deadeye and tied knot blocks for the upper, using fly tying silk for the lanyards.  It can be difficult to keep these even, but if they are, the effect is good.  Once I figure out how to post a photograph this may be clearer.

[Gwyl Blaser]

Lots of interesting ideas on deadeyes.  I guess the task is, to try a lot of different ideas for the scale I am working on and see which ones work the best.  

 

Alex,  I look forward to some images when you can.

 

Gwyl

 

 

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[Alex Bellinger]

 

If this worked, this is the pilot schooner Hesper with copper wire eyebolts clear on the rail. maybe a tad too obvious, with knot blocks for the upper deadeyes.  Fly tying silk is used for lanyards.  This is in a 2 liter bottle and is about 4" from waterline to top of the mast.

[Gwyl Blaser]

Alex,

 

This is a beautiful ship.  I like the look of the deadeyes.  It looks fantastic at this scale.

 

Thanks for sharing you work and explanations.  

 

Gwyl

[Dave Fellingham]

My method of making deadeyes is very similar to the method used on conventional static ship models. I drill three holes in each deadeye and rig them for real. The difference is that I use a sandwich of two discs cut from ca-treated card stock with modified leather punches. Find them with a search for "leather punches .8mm 1mm 1.5mm 2mm". They have a rounded cutting edge that should be sharpened (chuck in a drill and sand the bevel to an edge).

 

At the channels, copper wire of an appropriate gauge is bent around a drill bit shank two wire diameters smaller than the card discs, then the two tails are twisted together snugly, but just enough turns to match the thickness of the channel. For thread shrouds, use a drill bit two thread diameters smaller than the discs, make a needle eye splice and glue it well. For this I dilute 2 parts white pva with 1 part water, mixed with a small brush that had been wiped wet over the dried soap around the opening of the dish soap bottle. The soap reduces the surface tension of the glue allowing it to better wick into the fibers of the thread. Make sandwiches of two discs and a wire or thread loop glued with thick, slow-set ca.

 

When the glue has cured, drill three holes in each deadeye. I made a drilling fixture that holds the deadeyes and guides the bit for drilling the three holes so that the deadeyes are uniform to each other. I also made a fixture for rigging the lanyard.

 

Drilling fixture for deadeyes. The two vertical pieces guide the lower jaw for consistency between deadeyes.

 

Close-up of the face of the lower jaw. Holes are .010 inch / 0.25 mm and are in both faces of the jaws.

 

Rigging fixture for deadeyes. The vertical piece sets the distance between deadeyes.

 

Deadeyes on the left are .060 inch / 1.5 mm in diameter. Right, .040 inch / 1.0 mm.

 

Deadeye assembly set in place. This photo shows the twisted wire and needle eye splice at lower and upper deadeyes,

respectively. It shows where to use a needle to pass the thread through itself, twice, to form a needle eye splice.

 

Deadeyes in place, lanyards tied off, chains secured and a shroud spreader tied just above the deadeyes.

Just needs some paint touch-up. This two masted topsail schooner was about 6 inches (150 mm) X 6 inches.

 

It seems like a lot of work - and I guess it is - but the results are amazing. The next less complex method is to use or adapt the one described in Donald McNarry's "Shipbuilding in Miniature" (1955) in which he uses short pieces of wire glued to the faces of discs to simulate the appearance of deadeyes. Cutting and uniformly gluing little pieces of wire seemed as much work as drilling holes and rigging the lanyards - at least the drilling and rigging can be done with fixtures and I cannot think of a good fixture to help with gluing the pieces of wire. Using thread instead of wire might work better for a bottle ship.

 

When I made these I made all the parts then assembled them. After making the prototype and the fixtures, I punched a pile of discs, twisted copper wires around a drill bit and colored them, made a bunch of eye splices, glued together the deadeye blanks needed plus some extras, painted the blanks, drilled the holes (and re-touched the paint) and then rigged all the lanyards. Using production techniques saves a lot of time. Making the prototype and fixtures took more time than doing the production run of all the rest of the deadeye assemblies. Next time I will be able to make them quicker and I won't need to make new fixtures. Truth is they were easier than I thought they would be and worth the effort. Good lighting and magnification (my preference is an Opti-Visor) helps.

 

As I mentioned, I've made deadeyes 1.0 mm and 1.5 mm in diameter. I think .032 inch / 0.8 mm deadeyes are possible but the holes may need to be .008 inch / 0.20 mm instead of .010 inch and I have not been able to get a thread, even my finest fly tie thread, through that size hole. I plan to find out for sure when I have a project that needs deadeyes that small.

 

The discs are also useful to make non-working blocks and tackle by sandwiching thread between discs. Blocks can be built up as double- and even triple-sheave blocks. My profile photo shows the fore-top of the topsail schooner with 1.0 mm deadeyes and 1.0 and 0.8 mm blocks.

 

I hope I haven;t overwhelmed you, but you did ask. 

 

Dave

[Gwyl Blaser]

Hi Dave,

 

Yes, I did ask, and I'm glad I did.  Your tutorial is outstanding!  The bar for my future ships has just been raised a lot!  After reading your post, and looking at the photos, I can see many applications for different rigging features.  As you mentioned, making blocks in a similar fashion seems now straight forward, where before it was quite foggy.

 

 

I like the clear pictures of your jigs.  I love jigs! 

 

Thank you.  

Gwyl

[Chasseur]

Alex it looks really good to me.

Dave I still marvel at your work.

Heather Gabrial Rogers uses seed beads that look great as well.

It's cool how many ideas and techniques are out there.

I am still leaning toward John Fox III's knot technique.

Jeff

[Tubjugger]

 Extremely fine wire works for me. I cut two tongues of aluminum from a soda can equal in width to the height of the deadeye i deed and set them into the end of a short length of wooden dowel, they are spaced apart to equal the width of the projected deadeye. Slightly above the two tongues of aluminum i drive a needle or piece of music wire into the dowel, to form an eye as i wind the wire.

 

For an extremely small deadeye i take a length of copper wire, darken it with a sharpie or the chemical solution sold for darkening copper, and take it up along the left side of the left tongue, under, up, and around the pin, cross to the right tongue and down. The loose ends  are twisted into a tail that attaches to the hull.

 

The deadeye is completed with a small drop of paint at either end to simulate the blocks. With a really small block, it's almost impossible to tell from outside the bottle that only two strands of wire link the blocks.

 

If three strands are desired, a second piece of wire can be given one turn around the crossed wire immediatly below the eye, and one end pulled down between the two tongues and twisted in with the other wires forming the tail. The other  end of the wire can be clipped or proken off, and the paint applied that simulates the blocks.

 

to speed the process, pieces of wire can be cut to approximate length beforehand, and an eye bent into the midpoint of each by simply crossing them. With that done, each piece inturn can be dropped onto the pin, the tails pulled down along each tongue, and twisted together.

 

TJ

[Chasseur]

I am looking at a paper modelling technique right now on the 1/300 scale ships for the Lone Warrior article I am writing.

I am amazed at what paper modelers are doing these days regarding detail. Technique might work well for SIB's

When I get a chance I'll post results here good or bad.

Jeff

[Gwyl Blaser]

Jeff,

 

After seeing what you are doing with paper, I would certainly be interested in your results!

 

Gwyl

[Chasseur]

Yeah trying to do blocks and dead eyes at extremely small scales is the challange.

Stay tuned!

Jeff

[Taoism]

At the channels, copper wire of an appropriate gauge is bent around a drill bit shank two wire diameters smaller than the card discs, then the two tails are twisted together snugly, but just enough turns to match the thickness of the channel. For thread shrouds, use a drill bit two thread diameters smaller than the discs, make a needle eye splice and glue it well. For this I dilute 2 parts white pva with 1 part water, mixed with a small brush that had been wiped wet over the dried soap around the opening of the dish soap bottle. The soap reduces the surface tension of the glue allowing it to better wick into the fibers of the thread. Make sandwiches of two discs and a wire or thread loop glued with thick, slow-set ca.

 

When the glue has cured, drill three holes in each deadeye. I made a drilling fixture that holds the deadeyes and guides the bit for drilling the three holes so that the deadeyes are uniform to each other. I also made a fixture for rigging the lanyard.

 

Dave how do you do a needle eye splice at that small size?  Any photos?  Thanks in advance!

Edited September 23, 2015 by Taoism

[Dave Fellingham]

Sorry, I don't have any in-progress photos of a needle eye splice but did make a crude sketch. I use a needle to pass the thread back through itself to simulate an eye splice, glue it, then pass the needle through the thread a second time about a thread diameter or more away from the first and glue that. That second pass through cannot, in effect, just go back though the first "hole". When the glue is set, trim the loose end at an angle and glue it against the thread. It helps to know what a real eye splice looks like. The way shrouds are secured to dead eyes is different from an eye splice and involves three seizings which would be near impossible at anything even close to SiB scales but looks similar enough to an eye splice to get by. In fact, these dead eyes I've shown can only be used on large or large scale SiBs and still be to scale. These dead eyes require a different approach than usual when rigging the shrouds.

 

A sketch to show how the needle passes through the standing part of the thread twice.

The distance between the two passes through is exaggerated here for clarity. 

Rather than drawing a needle I "kinked" the line where the needle would be.

 

I couldn't find a good photo of a finished eye splice on a dead eye but did find this photo of a heart

secured with the same eye splice. This is on the mainmast stay with larger thread than was used on

the dead eyes. The drill bit is a stand-in for the fore mast and is 1/16th inch / 1.5 mm in diameter.

 

There are two basic kinds of needles available at the big box stores - sharps and embroidery needles - use sharps, embroidery needles have a more rounded point that allows the point to pass around thread fibers while sharps are, well, sharp, so that the needle will more easily go through the groups of fibers that are twisted together to make most thread. The needle needs to pass through at least one of those fiber groups rather than just between those groups, and it needs to do it both times through.

 

In my description you quoted, I mentioned gluing with diluted pva; however, since writing that I have switched to lightly diluted acrylic matte varnish for most of the gluing of rigging for three reasons. First, the varnish wicks into the thread fibers better than pva which sometimes just beads up on the surface even when diluted and using the soap trick. Second, pva doesn't adhere well to itself such as in re-applications to reinforce the glue joint. Third, pva sometimes dries milky rather than transparent spoiling the appearance, while the varnish never dries anything but clear.

 

I use an Opti-Visor with 2.75X magnification when doing these and other variations of splices using a needle. Passing a needle through a thread is somewhat more challenging than threading a needle and requires some practice - and magnification. I use needle eye splices in many places where I used to use knots because the eye splice is smaller, but I always test them the next day to make sure they won't slip under load.

[Taoism]

Dave, that really helps me understand it better.  I actually looked up needle eye splicing after I asked you about it, but I still couldn't quite wrap my head around trying to do that on a thread-level (vs the normal rope-level)...

 

Would you be willing to jump into the other thread I started and possibly add any photos of the jigs you use to work on the ship itself (clamp, vise..?)

 

I ordered a magnifying visor from Ebay recently.  I should be getting it in the next couple days.  I ordered this one: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/350973931928?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

We'll see if it helps much.

[Dave Fellingham]

Glad I could help. I saw someone's sketches for the mini eye splices several years ago but don't remember where or who, perhaps in an old book on conventional ship modeling. It kind of rattled around in my skull for a while until I saw how to do it at SiB size and did some experiments.

 

I follow the discussion on the clamps but don't really have much to add - I make a new stand or modify an old one to meet the needs of a planned build. It's just a tool I clamp in my Pana-Vise to hold the model while I work on it. They are often just a piece of square or rectangular cross-section molding picked up at a home improvement store for a buck or so. I don't even bother with fitting a cross bar as seen on many.

 

Dave

[nilson.marques]

Minha camera é mt ruim e não tenho brocas finas mas conseguir fazer esse bloco usando um pedaço de palito de fósforo tem 1,5mm